to think they would feel differently if they had children?

[Violetbeauregardesgum]

Just reflecting that the three most vehemently pro-abortion, abortion on demand up till 40 weeks women I know are all child free. Was talking to one the other day and was taken aback by how uncompromising she was. The 32 week old baby that the woman was imprisoned for aborting was not a baby, all women have the right to end a pregnancy at any point.

I am pro choice but think the 24 week cut off is about right. AIBU to think they would feel differently if they had gone through a pregnancy to term themselves?

What's your point?

Abortion is legal in the UK, until really very late into pregnancy. But there does come a point at which more than just the pregnant woman's wishes need to be taken into account.

I think it should be legal because a woman and her doctor are better placed to make these decisions than you, me, or the government. There are always different circumstances and context, underlying health conditions, assessment of risk etc.
You're not the only one upset by the idea of later term abortions. Nobody would like them. Anyone considering it must have compelling reasons. Why should a distant government take away a woman's ability to weigh up all the factors and decide? And yes, the vast majority of people would decide against abortion in the third trimester, that's clear from the numbers.

Unwanted children struggle too, and they probably don't have happy homes to live in. Why bring them into a world of hardship with a mother who wishes they hadn't been born?

Saying that a woman in labour should be able to request an injection to stop her baby's heart before it is born is really not all that different to saying she should be allowed to kill her newborn baby if she doesn't want to take care of it. The difference between a baby about to pass through the birth canal and a newborn baby might be two minutes.

I'm genuinely struggling to see what you are saying here.

Doctors aren't making decisions with little evidence or experience, why do you think that? The doctors involved in late term abortions are literally doing their job, this is what they do. I saw a documentary once where a Dr who did fertility treatment and abortion was asked if he thought those two aspects of his job were contradictory - he said no, in both ways he was helping women have the children they wanted.

And fyi, full term abortions are legal in this country, under specific, usually tragic, conditions. They are rare, but they can happen.

But only if a child is seemingly healthy. What happens if the sonographer notes that my baby has no legs, I dither and dither but decide at 36 weeks that I can’t cope and want to have an abortion?

Firstly this is highly unlikely. Women just don’t do this. But it is legal and the reality is that I’m going to struggle to find a doctor that is willing to do it, both from a moral perspective but also they probably wouldn’t be be convinced it was best for my mental health.

In this example it’s left between the mother and her doctor. Why not in other cases?

Most people on this thread aren't objecting to that, but to the idea that a woman should be allowed to have an abortion at any point in pregnancy for any reason, which would include being allowed to terminate a completely healthy pregnancy on the due date.

Feminist extremist - putting women's rights above all else to extreme levels, above the rights of doctors, foetus's, babies, midwives, nurses. Telling sensible pro choice women that they aren't pro choice for believing in a sensible cut off point.
Saying the country are forcing women to have babies, despite clear evidence to the contrary, purely because we don't perform abortions till the point of birth.

No, not all sex is consensual and not all women have access to birth control, thank goodness we live in a country that allows abortion then.

And no I don't see a huge difference between a newborn baby and a 38 or 39 or 32 week old foetus actually. Some of this age foetus's are already born, out in the world, some are probably already smiling at the point when people are advocating that another one is allowed to be killed in the womb.

Are you going to struggle to find a doctor willing to terminate a pregnancy where the foetus has an obvious and serious disability though?

Language like "think about the smiling baby" makes me immediately care less. I take the point about the practicality of late term abortions and would have to read more about this.

Regardless, I continue to believe that jailing Carla Foster was in not in society's best interests.

I wouldn't use the term "feminist extremists" because I don't think that this actually has all that much to do with feminism. This is about having employed black and white thinking in relation to an issue which is all shades of grey.

People whose beliefs are at one end of this particular spectrum believe that the rights of the foetus trump all other considerations, including the rights and in some cases the life of the woman. They would advocate for a total ban on abortion.

We have seen the reality of what they are calling for in countries where there is, or has been, a total ban on abortion. We've seen the tragic outcomes including women dying due to pregnancy complications, women being forced to carry babies with no chance of survival to term, women dying from botched backstreet abortions, women travelling to another country to access safe healthcare, and women being forced to give birth to unwanted children. Clearly, these are not things which should be happening in any country which values women's lives.

People whose beliefs are at the other end of the spectrum believe that the woman's bodily autonomy is paramount and that this trumps all other considerations, full stop. They would advocate for women to be able to access an abortion at any point in her pregnancy, for any reason, i.e. for there to be no hard limits.

We have not seen the reality of what they are calling for because almost all, if not all countries which allow abortion have imposed legal limitations on the reasons why a woman can request an abortion and the gestation before which she must do so. In practice, in every country in the world which allows abortion, there comes a point in time at which a woman carrying a healthy foetus can no longer choose to end her pregnancy and must see it through to the end. Anyone who says we don't need legal limits on abortion because no woman would actually choose to terminate her healthy pregnancy on her due date is speculating.

What I find really telling is that a lot of people who have adopted the "any time, for any reason" position will refuse to answer the question about whether a woman should be allowed to have an injection to stop her healthy baby's heart when she is actually in labour, and if so, whether doctors should be forced to do this if she requests it.

I am virtually certain that almost none of the people in this camp actually think a woman should be allowed to do this, and if it actually happened they would be horrified, despite the fact that they are the ones claiming to believe it should be legal. That means that they do actually think there should be some limits, they just don't want the responsibility for deciding what those limits should be. They want to achieve the true feminist victory of removing all and any obstacles to a woman seeking an abortion, and then sit back and "trust women" and "trust doctors" to ensure that atrocities and safeguarding failures do not occur.

Because they will never be in this position. They're not obstetricians or midwives tasked with delivering full term babies whose deaths they have procured. They know how to access contraception so they're far less likely to have an unwanted pregnancy in the first place (compared to the women whose interests they claim to be fighting), and if they did, they would know how to get an abortion well before 24 weeks. They will never be a mentally unwell woman who is 22 weeks pregnant and really not coping, who is led to believe that she has another 18 weeks to decide and then finds herself going into premature labour at 32 weeks, or desperately trying to find a doctor who will perform an abortion at 36 weeks. They will never be an abused woman whose ex partner wants to force her to have an abortion and who just wants to get to 24 weeks so that he can't do anything to get her to end her pregnancy. They'll never be anywhere close to the vulnerable women they are talking about or their care providers, so if the decision is left in the hands of those people and they get it wrong, they'll never know or care.

If you are seriously advocating for there to be no hard legal limits to abortion, what you are saying is that you hope there will never be any extreme cases (ignoring the fact that any abortion which wouldn't be permitted in the UK under the current law is already an extreme case) but that if there is an extreme situation, you want to rely on the people involved to make the right decision. You're hoping there will be a grown up in the room who will know what to do. And that grown up will not be you, thank goodness.

I think that's a cop out, personally. And I do not think the kind of legal uncertainty you want to introduce is likely to benefit anyone.

Maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe I would. If I’ve know since the 20 week scan and it’s taken me four months to come to this decision I think most people would question if I was really sure. But regardless if the child is disabled the law allows the woman her doctor to navigate this but not if the woman is a child herself, if she’s abused or any number of other situations where she might be vulnerable.

OK, let's use the child as an example. Let's say she's 12 and her pregnancy has only come to light at 30 weeks. Clearly she's extremely vulnerable.

You're going to need the involvement of her parents or legal guardians, the police, social services and the medical profession to establish what the fuck has happened here.

In what circumstances was her baby conceived? Who is the father? If the father is a family member with responsibility for her care, she will need to be removed immediately. If the father is some boy from school or a man who groomed her online, questions still need to be asked about how the fuck her family didn't notice she was pregnant.

That's going to take a little time to start with. She's going to need to undergo an assessment of her physical and mental health. She's going to need counselling.

She's also going to need someone to explain to her, in enough detail for her to fully understand, but in a way appropriate to her level of understanding, how developed her baby currently is, the fact that she will have to give birth, what that will look like if she gives birth to a live baby, what that will look like if she gives birth to a dead baby, what lasting impact there might be on her body afterwards and what will become of the baby if it is born alive.

Until you've done all that, she can't really make an informed decision about whether to terminate or not. And then she's going to be closer to full term.

Teenage girls have given birth to babies, often in unexpected and shocking circumstances, since the beginning of human history. Sometimes they have been able to keep them. Sometimes their mothers or older sisters or aunts have raised those babies as their own. Sometimes they have been taken into care and given up for adoption. Sometimes this has been the girl's decision and sometimes, tragically, she has been forced. I'd like to think that we now have a fairly good idea about which of these approaches have proved to be disastrous and which ones have turned out better for the teenage mothers and their babies.

What doesn't happen all that often, if ever, is that 12 year old girls found to be more than 6 months pregnant make a quick, properly informed decision to terminate, go through induced labour to deliver a dead foetus, and then just get on with their lives. I can't really see how that is going to be any less traumatic than her giving birth to a live baby and giving it up for adoption - which we already know from years and years of experience is very traumatic - and more to the point, I think it is going to be extremely difficult to carry out all the necessary safeguarding that has to take place to ensure that she fully understands the choice she is making and the consequences of it.

So we're not making a choice here between good feminists who would facilitate this child getting a late abortion which makes the whole problem go away and allows her to live happily ever after, and evil anti-feminists who would force her to give birth. As with the rest of the debate around abortion, it really isn't that simple and none of the options available this late in the day are good ones.

You think that a woman being able to choose what happens to her body is extreme? Wow. I'm not saying there isn't a balance to be struck, of course there is, but if it comes down to the woman or the foetus then yes I believe the woman takes precedence. She has to.

And you're not seriously suggesting that women should have to carry, birth and care for a baby, because the alternative will upset doctors and nurses? Come on. Doctors and nurses 'rights' absolutely should not be considered against the rights of the woman involved. Professionals working in this area choose to do so, there are lots of branches of medical care they could do instead if they find it too difficult. Should people not die because palliative care professionals find it upsetting? And they do by the way, but they accept it's part of their job. It's no different for obs and gynae professionals, this is part of their job.

She can choose. Up to 24 weeks in the UK. The system you are calling for does not exist anywhere in the world.

100% agree.

I'm not calling for anything, no one is planning to change the law as far as I know. And as I said, there is a balance which has to be struck, this is not a black and white issue. Treating complex ethical issues as black and white usually ends up badly. A lot of posters with strong opinions don't seem to see that their opinions are illogical, simplistic reactions to complex and ideosyncratic situations.

Then you're not arguing against what you think you're arguing against.

There are people on this thread who believe that having any kind of cut off point after which a woman can't have an abortion just because she doesn't want to have a baby is forcing women to give birth. One person actually confirmed she believes that a woman in labour should be allowed to request an injection to stop her baby's heart before she delivers because the baby doesn't have any rights until it has passed through the birth canal.

What's with the pretend shock? What's the wow for? I've clearly said I agree that women can choose up to a certain point like most of the rest of the world.

And yes I do think that late term abortions effect those involved in the procedure and that should be considered. It's not the woman that has to kill the full term baby is it, it's a doctor, and most wouldnt want to and shouldn't have to, which has been covered very comprehensively in other posts.

You are comparing this to palliative care professionals? Really?
Who choose a career where they want to help people and make INEVITABLE death as painless and peaceful as possible.

Well that's what the distant government legislated for by the 1967 Abortion Act, then reduced from 28 weeks to by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. That is the law that we have all lived with for the past 65 years.

Are any of the people who think there should be no time limit actively lobbying for a change in the legislation?

Right, so, as I surmised in my long post, you want to remove the legal restrictions which are currently in place (and which are less restrictive than almost anywhere else in the world), just in case a woman who is more than six months pregnant with a healthy baby decides she wants an abortion (the thing you say will never actually happen), in which case either the thing you say will never happen will in fact happen, unless it shouldn't be allowed to happen, in which case someone who is not you will step in and make sure it doesn't happen?

What a lot of responsibility you want to heap onto the shoulders of people who are not you.

But I do not think that women should be able to have abortions past 24 weeks unless there is a threat to the life of the mother

There are good philosophical reasons for putting caveats about foetal viability into women's pregnancy choices, but at the same time, childbirth is dangerous so there is always a threat to the life of the mother.

However, I don't think overall it helps the pro-choice cause for infighting about exactly what the limits of that choice are to be when the opposite of choice (ie a policy of anti-abortion in almost all or all circumstances) is extremely ideologically and physically dangerous for women.

I don't think it helps the pro choice cause for women in a country with some of the most liberal abortion laws in the world to be arguing that it is not enough and there should be no restrictions at all, which is what some people on this thread appear to be doing. It makes people in the pro choice camp look like extremists and makes it far to easy for those in the other camp to label them baby killers. Because there is really no difference between terminating a healthy pregnancy just before a woman gives birth and killing a newborn baby immediately after she gives birth.

If women on the pro choice side of the debate who live in the UK and already have the kind of access to abortion that most women worldwide could only dream of want to keep fighting this battle, in my opinion they should be fighting for women in Northern Ireland and elsewhere in the world to have the same access to abortion that women have in England, Scotland and Wales, not for women in England, Scotland and Wales to have even more freedom and choices than they already do.

It's not pretend shock. I'm shocked if you think that a woman should have to have a baby she doesn't want, because it'll upset professionals if she doesn't. It's not the professionals who'll have to carry the can, in that situation, it's the woman.

I can't agree with you that the effect on the professionals should be part of a balancing act of rights. The professionals have chosen to work in the field, if they can't do that part of the job they need to work in a different field. Do you think that oncologists should not give chemo which makes patients feel awful, because the oncologists will be upset to see it? Do you think surgeons should not amputate limbs because they don't like it? It's part of the job to do things which aren't fun, which you would rather not do, which are upsetting. I've seen young nurses crying doing last offices for a patient younger than them, but they do it because it's part of the job and part of caring for a patient. It's about the patients needs, not what the professional wants.

I'm aware that some people believe that. I'm not one of them, though I respect their position is logical. But I do agree that a foetus can't have rights, we just can't go down the route of giving rights to foetuses without removing rights from women. Any country you can find which assigns rights to foetuses, ends up giving more rights to the potential person that the actual already living one. Either by design or by accident, all of the countries which afford rights to unborn foetuses remove rights from women and deprioritise women. Women die in those countries who would live if they'd been in the UK. The woman has to come first.